Is trying to visualize your success not working for you or making you feel worse?

It might be because it’s only good for people who already believe they can reach the desired outcome. Amit Amin explains that if you have confidence in your ability to succeed, but are just lacking in motivation, mental contrasting (a visualisation concept developed by Gabriele Oettingen) can really help you. If you don’t have confidence it can do more harm than good though.

I’ll explain the technique in a minute but first ask yourself if you truly believe you can do what you are setting out to do. If in doubt try this first:

List reasons you ARE CAPABLE of being successful. You may need to add some evidence to convince your subconscious such as ‘I am capable of losing 10 pounds in 10 weeks because I know how to eat 500 less calories a day’ or I have lost weight before so I can do it again. Show your mind proof then, if you are sure you feel confident try this mental contrasting exercise:

List the positive aspects of completing your goal then focus on the biggest benefits and visualize them in depth. List the obstacles in your way and visualize the most prominent ones in depth.

Simple as that.

Why does it work? It increases the mind’s connection between obstacle and future reward. For example, your daily calorie deficit gets strongly connected to the benefits of losing 10lb.

Future visualisation works because in the past, before TV & story, we could only imagine attainable outcomes. Our imagination was only used for consideration and planning. Therefore our brains assumed anything it could see was attainable.

And for those goals you can’t really convince yourself you can achieve? ‘In some cases, it may make sense to reduce commitment towards unattainable goals. That way, time and energy can be freed up for more reasonable goals – ones which better match your capabilities.’

So aim high by all means but make sure you take steps to ensure your self belief can keep up!